they go back along the road, speak of it one to another:

"She is a parent or some friend, but it is strange she was not there at the beginning."

His companion turns round and sees the old woman following them. Le Père Saxe is some way on ahead, but she will not venture to address herself to him until he has put off his surplice.

"Ma mère," says one of the men kindly, "is it any one belonging to you that we have been laying there?"

"But no. I thank you, my friend, for your kind thought. I am a stranger just arrived from Trochu, and I thought I would pray for the departed one, that is all. Au revoir, my good friend."

Her

She nods and falls into the rear. poor stiff knees tremble, but still the gladness is in her eyes. Soon, very soon now, she shall reach the hospital and be with her Jacques.

"They can nurse him better than I can," she says, dragging one weary foot after its fellow, and panting in the treeless road, "but my Jacques will love dearly to see me. He loves his mother and tries to comfort her, does my Jacques."

Her kind friend, Mr. Martin, stands at the door as she goes in. She makes him a deep courtesy.

"How ill he looks-and yet he has not had nearly so long a journey as I have. Ah! it is as the good curé says, the back is always made for the burden."

Mr. Martin had come out to breathe the air and refresh his mind from the terrible sights and sufferings he had been witnessing-suffering which only insensibility could alleviate, which only death could cure. He shuddered, as he leaned against the open doorway, in thinking of the mere physical pain that was being endured over almost the whole of France. "And this is not all; there is mental agony still greater in the desolate homes, widowed mothers and their little ones. That poor creature now "he smiled as she courtesied-" how will she find her son? Perhaps suffering the tortures of those poor fellows I have just left; perhaps more mercifully dying; and yet how hard for her to have taken that long, devoted journey just to see him die!"

Meanwhile the old woman waited patiently in the small boarded space which served as entrance. Presently the man Presently the man NEW SERIES.-VOL. XVI., No. 5

Well, my mother," he said, "what are you looking for?"

Pardon, but I have a letter here from m'sieur the chaplain, and he tells me to ask for him and he will take me to the person I am come to see."

"In good time, my mother; then you will do well to come with me. I am going to find the father himself."

He opened a door in the wooden partition and held it while she passed into the hospital. The patients lay on straw on one side of the long, narrow shed, some with coverlets over them, but the greater number had tossed these off in their feverish movements. Bandaged legs and arms and heads were everywhere; and in some faces, where there was no apparent injury, the expression of agony was terrible. The mother of Jacques was full of the thought of her son, but she could not pass unmoved by this line of haggard sufferers.

"Poor man! poor boy!" she murmured; and once or twice she bent down and strove to place the coverlet over a sufferer who had thrown it off in his restless struggles.

Her conductor opened a door at the end, and she found herself in the open air again, facing another of the long low sheds.

Dr. L. stood here. He was speaking eagerly to a priest. He only wore his cassock now, but the old woman recognized the Père Saxe. Her conductor stood waiting, but Dr. L. had heard their approach, and he looked up quickly.

"But yes, father," he said to the priest, "here is a good woman who came from O— this morning. You have charge of her son, it seems. Will you take her to. him ?"

Her heart throbbed fast. Till now her quiet faith had kept her calm, but the nearness of coming joy was harder to bear in patience than the long suspense had' been. Père Saxe looked very kindly at her. "I have already seen you this morn-

ing." She courtesied, but her knees trembled.. "Can you tell me your son's number? I fear we have but few names in this. ward."

He opens the door. The ward is lighter and more cheerful looking than that through which she has passed. There are.

39

fewer patients, and their beds look more comfortable. The bed nearest the door is empty.

"Will you tell me the number?" repeats the priest.

"Number seven, at your service, mon père."

The Sister is at the further end of the room, and Dr. L. has gone on to look at her patients. She comes up quickly to Père Saxe while the old woman speaks; then she too speaks and looks to the other end of the room.

"Follow me," says Monsieur Saxe.

The mother of Jacques gives a straining, wistful look at every face as she passes, but she sees no one like her handsome boy. The men who lie here are all bearded, and look as if they had served in many campaigns, though their faces are so pale and bloodless. Père Saxe halts before a bed and looks round for her, but she does not hurry forward as he expects. It is a youth, it is true, who lies there, but it is not her son. She shakes her head.

the shock. Very quietly she follows the priest till he reaches the foot of the empty bed by the door, and there kneels down. She clasps her wrinkled hands over her face, but there is no sobbing burst of grief. Only the père, as he stands pityingly beside her, sees tears trickle through the trembling fingers. He bends down and whispers, "He was so patient and good, your Jacques; and you prayed for him this morning. His last wish was, that you should know where he lay, and God in His mercy guided you Himself thither."

He holds his crucifix to her, and she kisses it reverently, and then he offers up a prayer for the departed spirit of her son.

The voiture stands waiting to go back to D― next morning. There are no other passengers except the mother of Jacques. Mr. Martin has come to see her off, and he shakes her hand heartily as he places her in the voiture.

"Yours has been a weary sorrow, my friend, but you have borne it like a hero

The old eyes glisten even yet as she looks at him.

"Monsieur, my trouble might have been worse. My Jacques"-here the tears run over-" was always so strong, so manly! He would never be helped or waited on. He did all for me, and if he had lived he must have been, the père says, a poor, helpless cripple, and the good God has spared him this torment. M'sieur, I must now go home and comfort the poor child who loved him. Adieu! my good m'sieur: I cannot thank you. Ah! if it had not been for you I should perhaps not have assisted at his burial. M'sieur, when I pray for benefactors I shall pray for you.'

[From Temple Bar.

THE development of dress presents a strong analogy to that of organisms, as explained by the modern theories of evolution; and in this article I propose to illustrate some of the features which they have in common. We shall see that the

truth expressed by the proverb, " Natura non facit saltum," is applicable in one case as in the other; the law of progress holds good in dress, and forms blend into one another with almost complete continuity. In both cases a form yields to a

succeeding form, which is better adapted to the then surrounding conditions; thus, when it ceased to be requisite that men in active life should be ready to ride at any moment, and when riding had for some time ceased to be the ordinary method of travelling, knee breeches and boots yielded to trousers. The "Ulster Coat," now so much in vogue, is evidently largely fostered by railway travelling, and could hardly have flourished in the last century, when men either rode or travelled in coaches, where there was no spare room for any very bulky garment.

A new invention bears a kind of analogy to a new variation in animals; there are many such inventions, and many such variations; those that are not really beneficial die away, and those that are really good become incorporated by "natural selection," as a new item in our system. I may illustrate this by pointing out how macintosh-coats and crush-hats have become somewhat important items in our dress.

For

Then, again, the degree of advancement in the scale of dress may be pretty accurately estimated by the extent to which various organs" are specialized. example, about sixty years ago, our present evening-dress was the ordinary dress for gentlemen; top-boots, always worn by old-fashioned "John Bull Bull" in Punch's cartoons, are now reserved for the hunting field; and that the red coat was formerly only a best coat, appears from the following observations of " a Lawyer of the Middle Temple," in No. 129 of the Spectator: "Here (in Cornwall) we fancied ourselves in Charles II.'s reign, the people having made little variations in their dress since that time. The smartest of the country squires appear still in the Monmouth cock; and when they go awooing (whether they have any post in the militia or not) they put on a red coat."*

But besides the general adaptation of dress above referred to, there is another influence which has perhaps a still more important bearing on the development of dress, and that is fashion. The love of novelty, and the extraordinary tendency which men have to exaggerate any peculiarity, for the time being considered a mark of good station in life, or handsome in itself, give rise I suppose to fashion.

* P. 16, vol. i., of "Primitive Culture," London, 1871.

This influence bears no distant analogy to the "sexual selection," on which so much stress has recently been laid in the "Descent of Man." Both in animals and dress, remnants of former stages of development survive to a later age, and thus preserve a tattered record of the history of their evolution.

These remnants may be observed in two different stages or forms. Ist. Some parts of the dress have been fostered and exaggerated by the selection of fashion, and are then retained and crystallized, as it were, as part of our dress, notwithstanding that their use is entirely gone (e.g. the embroidered pocket flaps in a court uniform, now sewn fast to the coat). 2dly. Parts originally useful have ceased to be of any service, and have been handed down in an atrophied condition.

The first class of cases have their analogue in the peacock's tail, as explained by sexual selection; and the second in the wing of the apteryx, as explained by the effects of disuse.

Of the second kind of remnant Mr. Tylor gives very good instances when he says:

"The ridiculous little tails of the German postilion's coat show of themselves how they came to dwindle to such absurd rudiments; but the English clergyman's bands no longer convey their history to the eye, and look unaccountable enough till one has seen the intermediate stages through which they came down from the more serviceable wide collars, such as Milton wears in bis portraits, and which gave their name .to the 'band-box' they used to be kept in." These collars are curiously enough worn to this day by the choristers of Jesus College, Cambridge.

According to such ideas as these it becomes interesting to try to discover the marks of descent in our dresses, and in making this attempt many things apparently meaningless may be shown to be full of meaning.

Women's dress retains a general similarity from age to age, together with a great instability in details, and therefore does not afford so much subject for remark as does men's dress. I propose, therefore, to confine myself almost entirely to the latter, and to begin at the top of the body,

* See p. 356 of Fairholt's "Costume in Eng. land:" London, 1846.

HATS.-Hats were originally made of some soft material, probably of cloth or leather, and in order to make them fit the head, a cord was fastened round them, so as to form a sort of contraction. This is illustrated on p. 524 of Fairholt's "Costume in England," in the figure of the head of an Anglo-Saxon woman, wearing a hood bound on with a head-band; and on p. 530 are figures of several hats worn during the fourteenth century, which were bound to the head by rolls of cloth; and all the early hats seem provided with some sort of band. We may trace the remnants of this cord or band in the present hat-band. A similar survival may be observed in the strings of the Scotch-cap, and even in the mitre of the bishop.*

It is probable that the hat-band would long ago have disappeared had it not been made use of for the purpose of hiding the seam joining the crown to the brim. If this explanation of the retention of the hat-band is the true one, we have here a part originally of use for one purpose applied to a new one, and so changing its function; a case which has an analogy to that of the development of the swimmingbladders of fishes, used to give them lightness in the water, into the lungs of mammals and birds, used as the furnace for supporting animal heat.

The duties of the hat-band have been taken in modern hats by two running strings fastened to the lining, and these again have in their turn become obsolete, for they are now generally represented by a small piece of string, by means of which it is no longer possible to make the hat fit the head more closely.

The ancestor from which our present chimney-pot hat takes most of its characteristics is the broad-brimmed low-crowned hat, with an immense plume falling down on to the shoulder, which was worn during the reign of Charles II. At the end of the seventeenth, and during the eighteenth century, this hat was varied by the omission of the plume, and by giving of the brim various "cocks." That these "cocks" were formerly merely temporary is shown by Hogarth's picture of Hudibras beating Sidrophel and his man Whacum, where

For the origin of this curious head-dress, see Fairholt, p. 564.

See Fairholt, p. 540.

up in front to the crown with three buttons. This would be a hat of the seventeenth century. Afterwards, during the eighteenth century, the brim was bent up in two or three places, and notwithstanding that these "cocks" became permanent, yet the hats still retained the marks of their origin in the button and strap on the right side. The cockade, I imagine, took its name from its being a badge worn on one of the "cocks."

The modern cocked-hat, apparently of such an anomalous shape, proves, on examination, to be merely a hat of the shape above referred to; it appears further that the right side was bent up at an earlier date than the left, for the hat is not symmetrical, and the "cock" on the right side forms a straight crease in the (quondam) brim, and that on the left is bent rather over the crown, thus making the right side of the hat rather straighter than the left. The hat-band here remains in the shape of two gold tassels, which are just visible within the two points of the cocked-hat.

A bishop's hat shows the transition from the three-cocked hat to our present chimney-pot; and because sixty years ago beaver-fur was the fashionable material for hats, we must now needs wear a silken imitation, which could deceive no one into thinking it fur, and which is bad to resist the effects of weather. Even in a lady's bonnet the elements of brim, crown, and hat-band may be traced.

The "busby" of our hussars affords a curious instance of survival. It would now appear to be merely a fancy headdress, but on inspection it proves not be so. The hussar was originally a Hungarian soldier, and he brought his hat with him to our country. I found the clue to the meaning of the hat in a picture of a Hungarian peasant. He wore a red night-cap, something like that worn by our brewers' men, or by a Sicilian peasant, but the cap was edged with so broad a band of fur, that it made in fact a low " busby." And now in our hussars the fur has grown enormously, and the bag has dwindled into flapping ornament, which may be detached at pleasure. Lastly, in the new "busby" of the Royal Engineers the bag has vanished, although the top of the cap (which is made of cloth and not of fur) is still blue, as was the bag formerly; the top cannot,

however, be seen, except from a bird's-eye point of view.

It appears that all cockades and plumes are worn on the left side of the hat, and this may, I think, be explained by the fact that a large plume, such as that worn in the time of Charles II., or that of the modern Italian Bersaglieri, would impede the free use of the sword; and this same explanation would also serve to show how it was that the right side of the hat was the first to receive a "cock." A London servant would be little inclined to think that he wears his cockade on the left side to give his sword-arm full liberty.

COATS.-Every one must have noticed the nick in the folded collar of the coat and of the waistcoat; this is of course made to allow for the buttoning round the neck, but it is in the condition of a rudimentary organ, for the nick would probably not come into the right place, and in the waistcoat at least there are usually neither the requisite buttons nor buttonholes.

"The modern gentleman's coat may be said to take its origin from the vest or long outer garment, worn towards the end of the reign of Charles II."* This vest seems to have had no gathering at the waist, and to have been buttoned all down the front, and in shape rather like a loose bag; to facilitate riding it was furnished with a slit behind, which could be buttoned up at pleasure; the button-holes were embroidered, and in order to secure similarity of embroidery on each side of the slit, the buttons were sewn on to a strip of lace matching the corresponding button-hole on the other side. These buttons and button-holes left their marks in the coats of a century later in the form of gold lacing on either side of the slit of the tails.

In about the year 1700, it began to be the fashion to gather in the vest or coat at the waist, and it seems that this was first done by two buttons near the hips being buttoned to loops rather nearer to the edge of the coat, and situated at about the level of the waist. Our soldiers much in the same manner now make a waist in their loose overcoats, by buttoning a short strap to two buttons, placed a considerable distance apart on the back.

This old fashion is illustrated in

* Fairholt, p. 479.

a

figure dressed in the costume of 1696, in an old illustration of the "Tale of the Tub," and also in the figure of a dandy smelling a nosegay, in Hogarth's picture, entitled "Here Justice triumphs in his Easy Chair," &c., as well as elsewhere. Engravings of this transition period of dress are, however, somewhat rare, and it is naturally not common to be able to get a good view of the part of the coat under the arms. This habit of gathering in the waist will, I think, explain how it was that, although the buttons and button-holes were retained down the front edges, the coat came to be worn somewhat open in front.

The coat naturally fell in a number of plaits or folds below these hip buttons; but in most of Hogarth's pictures, although the buttons and plaits remain, yet the creases above the buttons disappear, and seams appear to run from the buttons up under the arms. It may be worth mentioning that in all such matters of detail Hogarth's accuracy is notorious, and that therefore his engravings are most valuable for the study of the dress of the period. At the end of the seventeenth, and at the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, coats seem very commonly to have been furnished with slits running from the edge of the skirt up under the arms, and these were made to button up, in a manner similar in all respects to the slit of the tails. The sword was usually worn under the coat, and the sword hilt came through the slit on the left side. Later on these slits appear to have been sewed up, and the buttons and button-holes died away, with the exception of two or three buttons just at the tops of the slits; thus in coats of about the year 1705, it is not uncommon to see several buttons clustered about the tops of all three slits. The buttons at the top of the centre slit entirely disap peared, but the two buttons now on the backs of our coats trace their pedigree up to those on the hips. Thus it is not improbable that although our present buttons represent those used for making the waist, as above explained, yet that they in part represent the buttons for fastening up these side slits.

The fold which we now wear below the buttons on the back are the descendants of the falling plaits, notwithstanding that they appear as though they were made for, and that they are in fact commonly used as, the recesses for the tail-pockets; but that