Lace expended for six new razor-cloths amounted to 2707., and 4997. 10s. worth of lace was bestowed on twenty-four new nightshirts, indusiis nocturnis.' The Queen Mary approached but did not reach the King in lace expenditure; her lace bill for 1694 amounted to 19187. suppressed and the hobby-horse was forgot.' Village festivals and love-locks and gay attire had the same fate as bear-baiting; nevertheless it was principally the middle and lower classes who submitted to the tyranny of Puritan austerity. These sober-suited people thought, with Sir Toby Belch, that it was not for gravity to play With respect to this age of heavy wigs at cherry-pit with Satan;' but the great and the laced Steenkerk cravat, many peoladies of the Puritan party loved not the ple possess among their family relics, Mrs. Roundhead fashions any more than the Palliser says, and as we have seen, long wives of the Cavaliers. Even the mother oval-shaped broaches of topaz or Bristol of Cromwell wore a handkerchief of which stone, and wonder what they were used for. the broad point lace alone could be seen, These were for fastening the lace Steenkerk and her green velvet cardinal was edged on one side of the breast when it was not with broad gold lace; and the body of the passed through the buttonhole. Under such great Protector austere as he was in life royal patronage the lace trade necessarily in dress was arrayed after death in pur-prospered, and Defoe quotes Blandford lace ple velvet, ermine, and the richest Flanders as selling ten years after William's death at lace, and his effigy, carved by Symonds, 30l. the yard. had a plentiful adornment of point. In a political jeu d'esprit of the disbursements of the Committee of Public Safety, we have Lady Lambert put down for Item, seven new whisks lin'd with Flanders lace of the last edition, each whisk is valued at fifty pound, 3501.' With the Restoration, the • The dangling knee fringe and the bib-cravat,' lace once more had one of its sunniest epochs in the eyes of fashion; and Pepys, in 1662, could put on his new lace band' and say, 'so neat it is that I am resolved my great expenses shall be lace-bands, and it will set off anything else the more.' Charles II. in the last year of his reign spent 201. 12s. for a new cravat to be worn on the birthday of his dear brother;' and James expended 291. upon one of Venice point to appear in on that of his queen. When the last Stuart king died at Saint Germain, he died according to French etiquette, and, to please Louis XIV., in a laced nightcap. This cap was called a toquet. It was the Court etiquette,' writes Madame in her Memoirs, for all the Royals to die with a nightcap on.' This toquet of King James is now in the Museum of Dunkirk. Mary of Modena died also in like fashion, coiffée with the toquet. William III., in spite of his grim phlegmatic character, had a genuine Dutch taste for lace, so that his bills for that article in 1695 reached the immense sum of 24591. 198.; thus almost doubling the lace extravagance of Charles I. Among the more astonishing items we have 117 yards of "scissæ teniæ," cutwork for trimming 12 pockethandkerchiefs £. s. d. 485 14 3 0 And 78 yds. for 24 cravats at 87. 10s. 663 0 These were the days when young military heroes went to war in all the bravery of toilette they could muster; so that later, in the time of Louis XV., the young nobles of France sat for hours under the operations of their valets and perruquiers in front of their tents preparing their toilette de guerre with greater pains than the Graces ever bestowed upon Venus. Even Volunteers must go to camp properly equipped, the Stockjobbers;' as in Shadwell's play of the Volunteers or The hairpowder of the army,' an indignant writer observes at this period, would feed 600,000 persons per annum.' The World' regarded this expenditure of finery on men about to be food for powder in the same light as the silver plates and ornaments on a coffin. The gay young fellows would not sure be frightful when one's dead: ' To war the troops advance, 1664, the Turkish Vizier, Achmet Kiuprili the wind, exclaimed, 'Who are these young fathers; an indignant dramatist writes churlgirls ?" Soon after, in one irresistible ishly in Tunbridge Wells: '-charge, the young ladies broke up the ranks of his terrible Janissaries, and changed disaster into victory. Even in Sheridan's time the hearts of young ladies at home, like that of the Justice's daughter in St. Patrick's Day,' melted at imagination of the hardships of young warriors in their gay attire: 'Dear, to think how the sweet fellows sleep upon the ground and fight in silk stockings and lace ruffles.' Queen Anne's reign appears to have been illustrated principally by the invention of Pinners doubled-ruilled, with twelve plaits of a side: the hair being frizzled all around the head, and standing as stiff as a bodkin. The prettiest fashion lately come over! so easy, so French, and all that,' as Parley says in Farquhar's Sir Harry Wildair.' The commode' or Fontange's coiffure, too, met with a fall under her dynasty, sinking all of a sudden like the funds in time of revolution. These had, indeed shot up to such a height that the wits declared the ladies carried Bow steeples upon their heads; and Addison declared that men looked like mere grasshoppers before the towering majesty of the female species. Lace, moreover, met with a very treacherous rival in china, a mania for which now set in; the ladies, having coaxed their lords into generosity for the respectable old investment in lace, would surreptitiously barter their Flanders lace for punch-bowls and mandarins. So that a husband,' Addison tells us, was often purchasing a large china vase, when he fancied he was giving his wife a new head-dress; but,' as Mrs. Palliser observes, with womanly spirit, husbands could scarcely grumble, when a good wig cost forty guineas, to say nothing of male lace ties and ruffles.' 6 Since your fantastical geers came in, with wires, ribbons, and laces, and your furbelow, has not been a good housewife in the nation.' with 300 yards in a gown and petticoat, there Swift says that the ladies did then nothing so much as Of caps and ruffles hold the grave debate, And when you are among yourselves, how naturally after the first compliments do you entertain yourselves with the price and choice of lace, apply your hands to each other's lappets and ruffles, as if the whole business of your life depended on the cut of your petticoats." Ladies' maids found the bribe of a bit of Flanders irresistible from their mistress's lover. In the Recruiting Officer,' we have this piece of dialogue between Lucy the maid and Melinda : Lucy. Indeed, madam, the best bribe I had from the captain was only a small piece of Flanders lace for a cap. 'Melinda.- Ay, Flanders lace is a constant present from officers. . They every year bring over a cargo of lace to cheat the King of his duty and his subjects of their honesty.' Indeed, the very appearance of beauty in lace and distress had something so indescribably touching in it, that even jurors at the Old Bailey were moved to tears by the agitations of the elegantly-laced stomacher, lace flounces and weeping ruffles of pretty Miss Margaret Caroline Rudd, when standing at the bar for forgery. The triumph of lace, however, was incomplete, for she was hanged in spite of ruffles, flounces, and stomacher. The Connoisseur' evidently thought the spirit of gambling could go no further in a lady, if she staked her lace: The accession of the House of Hanover did nothing to derange the steady dominion which lace now had fixed upon the male and female mind. Although Lord BolingThe lady played till all her ready money was broke so enraged Queen Anne by his untidy dress, that she supposed, forsooth, he handkerchief. He then staked both cap and gone, staked her cap and lost it, afterwards her would some day come to Court in his night-handkerchief against her tucker, which, to his cap, yet he neglected not to have his cravat pique, she gained.' of point lace, and his weeping ruffles depended from his wrists. In England these ruf- Ladies, however, not only recklessly fles were said to serve for passing Jacobite gambled their lace, but they smuggled it notes, poulets,' from one rebel to another. whenever they could themselves, and enIn France, alas! sharpers found them con-couraged others to do it for them. They venient for cheating at cards. The passion defied the laws, and cheated the King's cusfor lace was so great in the time of the first toms shamefully, and without scruple. two Georges, that satirists railed against it In vain, from 1700 downwards, were as if it were a thing unknown to their fore-edicts issued prohibiting entirely the import eas, took fright for her purchase, and confided her distress to her neighbour at table, who, being an unmarried gentleman, offered to take charge of it to London, saying, 'No one would suspect a bachelor.' Happening to turn round she observed a waiter smile, and putting him down at once for a spy, she graciously accepted the offer in a loud tone of voice; but that night she had the veil sewed up in the back of her husband's waistcoat, and got it safe through, while the custom-house officers rigorously, ruthlessly, and desperately overhauled her unfortunate bachelor friend and his baggage en route behind her at every town. of foreign lace, for the protection of home | lining of her carriage taken from her. The manufacture. Ladies of rank were stopped owner of the Brussels veil, having just in their chairs in Fleet Street or Covent bought it of a smuggler for a hundred guinGarden, and relieved by the officers of the customs of French lace to which they could not show a satisfactory title. Even ladies, when walking, had their mittens cut off their hands, if supposed of French manufacture; and a poor woman was stopped with a quartern loaf in her hands, which, when examined, contained 2007. worth of lace inside the crust. In 1767, an officer of the customs seized 400l. worth of Flanders lace artfully concealed in the hollow of a ship's buoy. Everybody smuggled; yet, if you got your lace safely through Dover, you might have it seized at Southwark, as a gentleman of the Spanish embassy found to his cost, who was relieved in that suburb of thirty-six dozen shirts with fine Dresden ruffles and jabots, and endless lace in pieces for ladies' wear. The discredit into which lace fell at the French Revolution communicated itself to England, and India gauze and transparent muslins likewise usurped its place here. The officers of the customs were very Only at court, at such state occasions as the zealous, and had spies ever on the watch; marriage of the Princess Caroline of Wales, warned by experience, they neither re-in 1795, did it still maintain its old supremspected the sanctity of coffin or corpse acy; but it disappeared from the costumes coming across the channel. Even his of all classes. The rich lace which had cost Grace the Duke of Devonshire was, after thousands was stowed ignominiously away death, poked into at Dover with a stick, to in old wardrobes and chests, given away to the disgust of his servants, to make sure children to dress their dolls with, or bethat he was real. Forty years indeed be- stowed on old dependants and servitors who fore that, the body of a deceased clergyman were ignorant of its value. Some of these was found to have been replaced by a bulk would simmer the fine coffee-coloured points, of Flanders lace of immense value. The the delight of a past generation, in cauldrons smugglers had cut away the trunk from the to make them clean, and so reduce them to head and hands and feet, and removed it; a pulp; and an old Scotch servant who had and the discovery of this trick caused the charge of her deceased mistress's wardrobe, ignominious treatment of the body of the on being asked by the legatees what had beDuke of Devonshire. Nevertheless, the come of the old needle points of her lady, High Sheriff of Westminster ran comforta- said, 'Deed it's a' there, 'cept a wheen auld bly 60007. worth of French lace in the coffin dudds, black and ragged, I flinged in the of Bishop Atterbury, who died in Paris, fire.' This, indeed, was the martyr age of when he was brought over, counting proba-lace, but it came to an end, and in the last bly on a dead Bishop inspiring more awe than a deceased Duke. twenty years a passion for the old fabrics has arisen once more in England as well as At the close of the last French war smug- France. Madame Camille, the celebrated gling had a very lively existence, and tra- Parisian dressmaker, was one of the first to velling carriages and mail-coaches were bring back the taste to the old laces. Her rifled on the London and Dover road with- husband arrived one morning with a huge out mercy, and generally with little effect. basket of old soiled yellow lace, and a Mrs. Palliser has in her possession afacture' of 1000 francs. The artiste' at Brussels veil of great beauty, which had a narrow escape from the custom-house officers at this time. It belonged to a lady who was wife of a Member of one of the Cinque Ports. The day after an election she was to start with her husband for London. When at a dinner-party, she heard in the course of conversation that Lady Ellenborough, wife of the Lord Chief Justice, had been stopped near Dover, and a quantity of valuable lace concealed in the LIVING AGE. VOL. X. 403 first flew into a desperate passion at his expenditure, but reflection brought calmness and invention, and very soon the scissors of the fashionable modiste gave new vogue to the despised old tissues, and no toilette was complete sans les anciennes dentelles, garniture complète.' The dames du grand monde, both English and French, took to hunting out old treasure-troves of the com modity, and chaperones on the blue benches at Almack's and elsewhere exchanged con fidences as to good luck in picking up point stiffness, offered a grander and more gorcoupé, Alençon, or guipure. The late Lady geous surface to the eye, though failing in Morgan and Lady Stepney were among the the fine, floating, airy, vaporous grace of first to take up the collecting mania, and the Brussels manufacture. In comparison quarrelled weekly about the relative merits with these, the manufactures of other counof their points. While the late Duchess of tries have a coarser second-rate character Gloucester, who never gave in to the de--although it grieves us to own this of based taste for blonde and muslin frippery, the Honiton lace, of which beautiful exambut preserved her collection entire, found ples were to be seen both in pattern_and herself one of the most envied ladies in workmanship. Specimens, also, of Irish Europe. The church lace of Italy, Spain, guipure had a richness and elegance truly reGermany, formed for some time an admi-markable. Lace is one of the most marrable preserve to those who were sagacious and enterprising enough to make search for it, and in remote districts, some spoil typifying the decay of old religious reverence is doubtless yet to be secured, although the main stores must be exhausted. The present state of the manufacture of lace would of itself demand the space of an article. Those who visited the Universal Exhibition of 1867 could not fail to be struck with the surprising beauty and lightness, and the exquisite patterns of the productions of Brussels, in which flowers and foliage were displayed and intertwined with the most consummate grace, and a marvellous truthfulness to the forms of nature; while the magnificent robes of the more rigid and richer needlework of the Point d'Alençon, with its raised edges and borders worked round concealed horsehair to give it greater vellous products of human industry, and on looking at these fairy tissues, produced by infinitesimal touches of labour, and long and ineffably delicate manipulation of the needle, one is struck with admiration of the profoundest character at seeing the victory of human hands in minuteness of toil, and in patience, over the insect wonders of the spider and the ant. This graceful ornament of civilization has found a worthy historian in Mrs. Palliser, who has produced a book which will be found interesting alike to the antiquary and the lady of fashion-enriched with quotations and references in an abundance which leaves nothing to be desired by the curious — while the elegance of its designs and illustrations is sufficient to captivate the most fastidious taste. From The New York Evening Post. CHARLES SPRAGUE, THE BANKER-POET. tennial Anniversary of the Settlement of Boston reminds us of Dryden's happiest efforts, and his elegiac tributes and lyrics of affection are remarkable for melodious simplicity and genuine been secluded; but he is visited by the choicest spirits of Boston, and finds in a competence honorably earned, in the love of his grandchildren, and in his fine literary tastes, the most serene enjoyment. The following tribute to him appears in the Atlantic Monthly for August: CHARLES SPRAGUE is now an octogenarian. He lives at the South End, in Boston, where he was born, and such is his strong local attach-feeling. Mr. Sprague's life of late years has ment and his love of home, that it is said he has not slept out of his native city for half a century. During that period of time he was the cashier of the Globe Bank, and a model officer, universally respected for his integrity, systematic attention to his duties, and cheerful, intelligent companionship. Educated in the excellent public schools of Boston, he cultivated a love of, and taste for, English literature, and his friends, Rev. Dr. Frothingham and Joseph T. Buckingham -the first his pastor-shared and sympathized in his critical enjoyment of the old English writers. His Shakespeare ode is regarded as the best theatrical prize poem ever written; his poem on "Curiosity," delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University in 1829, is an admirable examplar of finished, spirited, and graceful heroic verse; his ode on the Cen TO C. S. BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN. As the aroma thou hast bravely sung True as the oak to that one spot of earth A FALL. Thy loyal soul no other prospect craves Enough for thee to feel the Sabbath air, home. Though crowds profane the old sequestered way of yore, While doves his daily largess came to greet, First of the living bards my boyhood knew, Amid the frauds and follies of the mart, burn "! Not the vague dreams of transcendental lore 547 Whether she train the myriad lures that bind The opening line refers to his well-known verses "To my Cigar." Of the local allusions the Boston Transcript says: "Old residents of the South End will recognise the by-gone aspect of that section of our city in the allusions to the old Tuckerman mansion, with its garden extending to the waters of the Back Bay, now filled up and covered with elegant mansions, the dove-cotes, and Neck, along which the cows came at sunset from their surburban pasturage, and even the little black circle on the wall that marked the passage of a shot from the British camp in the Revolution, all of which, with many other local traits, have disappeared, though the venerable poet still lives amid the changed scenes of his birthplace." From The Spectator. A FALL. LEAVE him in peace (if Peace can rest Leave him at peace. No feebler light Leave him at peace. Perchance alone Ay, haply, fallen as he is, Some higher hope he still may covet,' Miss the strong heart that prompted him And at his nobler will's demands Yet not to us. He cannot reach his former seat, H. S. B. |