Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845

No. II

About a Bonnet

So then, having "put down" hats, we come to bonnets; this is the due order of things — hats should be taken off before bonnets always; "common politeness makes us stop and do it." And here, as the immortal Butler found it necessary in olden times to lament the perils that environed a man meddling with a hard subject, so we might well indulge in an ejaculation at what may be our fate if we presume to take liberties with the head-dress of the ladies. Actæon, when he contemplated Diana simplicem munditiis, paid a severe penalty in the transformation of his own head; and so, perhaps, we may incur — but never mind; the task, worthy of a Hercules, (for the hydra of female fashion is more than hundred-headed,) must be gone through with, and the scrivano umillimo must push his pen even under the pole of a lady's bonnet.

The best-dressed woman in the world was our great-great-great progenitrix; we really cannot trace up the pedigree, but you all know whom we mean — your common mother and ours: we have the highest authority among our own poets for saying so. There can be no doubt that her coiffure was perfect. It is a law of nature — it was true then — it has been true ever since — it is indisputable at the present day — the expressive beauty of a woman lies in her face: whatever, therefore, conceals the face is a disfigurement, and inherits the principle of the ugly. Ye who would study the æsthetics of human habiliments, look at the lovely lines of the female face; contemplate that fairest type of the animated creation; observe the soft emotions of her gentle soul, now shooting forth rays of tender light from between her long enclasping eyelashes, now arching her rosy lips into the playful lineaments of Cupid's mortal bow; or gaze upon the subdued and affectionate contentment of the maternal countenance — remember, while you were yet young, your mother's look of love, that look which was all-powerful to master your fiercest passions in your wildest mood — who will say that the female face ought to be concealed? As far as we, the more powerful, though not the better, portion of the human race are concerned — off with the bonnet! off with the veil! say we. But there are others to be consulted in settling this preliminary dogma of taste — the feelings and the inclinations of woman herself are entitled to at least as much regard as the imperious wishes of man. She, who possesses the bright but fleetly fading gift of beauty, has also that inestimable, indefinable accompaniment of it — modesty. Beauty is too sensitive a gem to be always exposed to the light of admiration; it must be ensheathed in modesty for its rays to retain their primitive lustre; it would perish from exposure to the natural changes of the atmosphere, but it would die much sooner from the incomprehensible, yet positive, effects of moral lassitude. To use a commonplace simile, gentle reader, woman's beauty is like champagne, it gets terribly into a man's head: do not, however, leave the cork out of your champagne bottle — the sparkling spirit will all evaporate; and do not quarrel with your sweet-heart if she muffles up her face sometimes, and will not let you look at it for a week together — her eyes will be all the brighter when you next see them. There is a good cause for it; man is an ungrateful, hardly-pleased animal; every indulgence that woman grants him loosens her power over him. Women have an innate right to conceal their heads!

We arrive, then, at the foundation of taste for a lady's head-dress. Her face, her head, is naturally so beautiful, that the less it is concealed — as far as the mere gratification of the eye is concerned — the better; but the necessity for veiling and protecting this precious object is so inevitable, that a suitable extraneous covering must be provided; let that covering be as consonant to her natural excellence as it is possible to make it.

Now, we are not going to write a history of all the changes of female head-dress that have taken place since the world began: nothing at all of the kind. We refer the curious amateur to the work of that learned Dutchman — we forget his name, 'tis all the same —De Re Vestiaria; or he may look into Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians— there is a pretty considerable variety of bonnets or caps to be seen therein, we calculate. If he be a decided cognoscente, let him rather go to the Attic gallery in the British Museum, and examine the Panathenaic procession, where the virgins are in the simple attire of the best days of Greece: but here, or in any of the monuments of that foster-country of art, and in all the series of Roman sculpture and coins, he will find no head-dress for a female beyond that of the veil. The great artists and the great conquerors of the world never tolerated any thing beyond this flowing drapery of the veil, as the covering for their wives' or daughters' heads. They were satisfied with the beautiful contrast given by the curving lines of its graceful folds; they admired its simplicity; and they saw the perfect suitableness of its nature to its purpose. The veil could be hastily drawn over the head, so as to conceal every feature, and protect it from the gaze of man or the roughness of the seasons — and it could as easily be withdrawn partially to allow of "a sidelong glance of love," or wholly to give "a gaze of welcome," to a relation and a friend. Happy men those old Greeks and Romans! they had no bills for milliners — whatever their jewellers' accounts might have come to! When they travelled, their slaves were not pestered with bonnet-boxes and similar abominations — a clean yard or two of Phœnician gauze, or Asian linen, set up Mrs Secretary Pericles, or Mrs General Cæsar, with a braw new veil. There was little caprice of fashion — the veil would always fall into something like the same or at least similar folds; and we do believe that, for a thousand years or more, the type of the mode remained fixed. Whether the ancient Asiatics made their women wear precisely the same mask-veils as those jealous rascals the Turks and Arabs do at the present day, we do not know, and we are not now going to enquire: we only wish to protest, en passant, against these same modern Eastern veils; they are the most frightful, unclassical, unbecoming things ever invented as face-cases. Our present purpose is with the head-dress of modern British ladies — let us look into their bonnets.

And truly a bonnet, taken by itself, without the jewel that often lies under it — a bonnet per se— is as bad a thing as a hat; something between a coal-scuttle and a bread-basket; it is only fit to be married to the hat, and, let us add — settled in the country. But it is, nevertheless capricious in its ugliness, just as its possessor is capricious in her prettiness; for, look at it from behind, its lines do not greatly deviate from the circular form of the head; it seems like a smart case; — look at it from before; there it is seen to best advantage as an oval frame, set with ribands, flowers, and laces, for the sweet picture within; but look at it from the side, and the genuine, vulgar, cookmaid form of the coal-scuttle is instantly perceived. It serves in this view evidently as blinkers do to a horse in harness, just to keep the animal from shying, or to guard off a chance stroke of the whip. But it is uncommonly tantalizing into the bargain. You walk along Regent Street some fine day, and for a hundred paces or more you are troubled by the crowd keeping you always in the rear of an old, faded, frumpy bonnet, that hinders you from watching a sweet little chapeau-de-soie immediately beyond. Your patience is exhausted, and your curiosity driven to the highest pitch of anxiety; you make a desperate stride, push by the old bonnet, and look round with indignation to see what beldam had thus been between you and the "cynosure of neighbouring eyes: " — whew! 'tis the pretty young shop-girl that served you with your last pair of gloves, and measured them so fascinatingly along your hand, that your heart still palpitates with the electrical touch of her fingers. You pocket your indignation, exchange one of your blandest smiles, and pass on, still striding to see what lovely features grace that exquisite chapeau. Half afraid, of course — for she is a lady evidently, and you pique yourself on being a perfect gentleman — you venture, as you pass, to let your eye just glance within the sacred enclosure of blonde and primroses; — pshaw! it's old Miss Thingamy, that you had to hand down to dinner the other day at Lady Dash's; and instantly catching your eye, she gives you a condescending nod, and you're forced to escort her all the way up to Portland Place! It's enough to make a man hang himself; and, to say the truth, many a poor fellow has been ruined by bonnets before now — even Napoleon himself had to pay for thirty-six new bonnets within one month for Josephine!

Bonnets, however, have more to do with women than with men; and we defy our fair friends to prove that these articles of dress, about which they are always so anxious, (a woman — a regular genuine woman, reader — will sacrifice a great deal for a bonnet,) are either useful or ornamental. And first, for their use; if they were good for any thing, they would protect the head from cold, wet, and sunshine. Now, as far as cold is concerned, they do so to a certain degree, but not a tenth part so well as something else we shall talk of by and by; as for wet — what woman ever trusted to her bonnet in a shower of rain? What woman does not either pop up her parasol, or green cotton umbrella, or, if she has not these female arms, ties over it her pocket-handkerchief, in a vain attempt to keep off the pluvious god? Women are more frightened at spoiling their bonnets than any other article of their dress: let them but once get their bonnets under the dripping eaves of an umbrella, and, like ostriches sticking their heads under ground, they think their whole persons safe; — we appeal to any man who has walked down Cheapside with his eyes open, on a rainy day, whether this be not true. And then for the sun — who among the ladies trust to her bonnet for keeping her face from freckling? Else why all the paraphernalia of parasols? why all these endless patents for sylphides and sunscreens of every kind, form, and colour? why can you never meet a lady in a summerwalk without one of these elegant little contrivances in her hand? Comfort, we apprehend, does not reside in a bonnet: look at a lady travelling, whether in a carriage or a railroad diligence — she cannot for a moment lean back into one of the nice pillowed corners of the vehicle, without running imminent risk of crushing her bonnet; her head can never repose; she has no travelling-cap, like a man, to put on while she stows away her bonnet in some convenient place: the stiffened gauze, or canvass, or paper, of which its inner framework is composed, rustles and crackles with every attempt at compression; and a pound's worth or two of damage may be done by a gentle tap or squeeze. Women, if candid, would allow that their bonnets gave them much more trouble than comfort, and that they have remained in use solely as conventional objects of dress — we will not allow, of ornament. The only position in which a bonnet is becoming — and even then it is only the modern class of bonnets — is, when they are viewed full front: further, as we observed before, they make a nice encadrement for the face: and, with their endless adjuncts of lace, ribands, and flowers, they commonly set off even moderately pretty features to advantage. But is only the present kind of bonnet that does so; the old-fashioned, poking, flaunting, square-cornered bonnet never became any female physiognomy: it is only the small, tight, come-and-kiss-me style of bonnet now worn by ladies, that is at all tolerable. All this refers, however, only to that portion of the fairer half of the human race which is in the bloom and vigour of youth and womanhood: those that are still in childhood, or sinking into the vale of years, cannot have a more inappropriate, more useless, covering for the head than what they now wear, at least in England. Simplicity, which should be the attribute of youth, and dignity, which should belong to age, cannot be compatible with a modern bonnet: fifty inventions might be made of coverings more suitable to these two stages of life.

How, then, has it come to pass that women have persuaded themselves, or have been overpersuaded, into the belief that a bonnet is the highest point of perfection in their dress? It has all been done by a foolish imitation of the caprices of French milliners, themselves actuated by millions of caprices and fancies — but at the same time by one steadily-enduring principle, that novelty and change, no matter how useless, how extravagant, form the soul of their peculiar trade. For, note it down — the bonnet mania has not mounted upwards from the lower to the higher ranks of society; on the contrary, it has been a regular plant, sown as a trifling casual seed in the hotbed of some silly creature's brain, and then sending down its roots into many an inferior class. Any one who has crossed the British Channel, knows that the bonnet — as we understand the word in England — is not an article of national costume in any portion of the world except our own island — America and Australia we place, of course, out of the pale of taste. In France itself, the peasantry, and all classes of women immediately under the conventional denomination of ladies, wear bonnets. This word does not signify the same thing as with us, gentle reader. The French word bonnet means a snow-white cap, whether rising into an enormous cone, like those of the Norman beauties, or limited to a jaunting frill and lappels, like those of the Parisian grisettes. The real bonnets, the French female chapeau, is worn only by those who call themselves ladies; and this difference of costume marks a most decided difference of rank and self-esteem in the various grades of Gallic society. In the Bourbonnois, it is true, and in some parts of Switzerland and Germany, straw-hats of various sizes are worn by the peasantry; but these do not resemble the actual bonnet of the nineteenth century. Who does not know the exquisite national head-dresses of the Italian and Spanish women, from pictorial representation, if not from actual inspection? Who has not read of the Greek cap and veil? Who has not heard of the national caps of Poland, Hungary, and Russia? Not the slightest approximation to the eccentricity of the bonnet is to be found in any of these. In all of them, not caprice, but the more rational qualities of use and ornament, have been studiously regarded. It is in England only that our lower classes of women have abandoned their national costume, and are content to suffer the inconvenient consequences of imitating their superiors. Let any one who has traversed Europe only recall to his mind the appearances of the female peasants as to their head-dress, whether in their houses or in the fields, and comparing them with the tattered, dirty things worn by the labourers' wives and daughters of England, say which are to be preferred in point of taste — which are the cleanest — which are the most becoming.

Not to go too far back into the mist of antiquity, the earliest traces that we can find of hats being commonly worn in England, are to be met with somewhere in the first half of the last century. Previous to that time ladies wore hoods and caps; and in the Middle Ages muffled their heads in wimples and veils; but some time or other — in the reign of the second George, we believe — some lady or other stuck on her head a round silk hat with a low crown and a broad brim, perfectly circular, and the brim or ledge at right angles to the crown or head-piece. This she subsequently changed into a straw one, and this was the root of the evil —hinc illæ lachrymæ! We are aware that, at the gay court of Louis XIV., and even before he had a court, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, when she went to battle or to hunt, wore a gold-laced semi-cocked hat: so did Madame de Montespan when she accompanied the king to one of his grand parties de chasse. But then, at the same time, these illustrious "leaders of ton" put on gold-embroidered male coats, and evidently endeavoured to transform themselves into men while partaking in manly sports and dangers. Their hunting-hats bore no more relation to the bonnets of their descendants, than do the black beaver hats of the latter, when they mount their horses in Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne. Indeed this very custom of wearing the male hat, is derived by our modern belles from the times we are speaking of. Plain beaver or felt hats were worn by some of our farmers' wives as early as the reign of Charles I.; but, to judge from the prints of that date, they borrowed them from their husbands. And to a period like this is to be traced the custom, still extant throughout most parts of Wales, for the women to wear the same head-costume as the men. The round ladies' hat, however, of the middle and end of the last century, may be seen in its primitive state in those enormous circles of straw, brought from Tuscany, and sold in our milliners' shops, fit to be pinched and cut into the prevailing fashion. The hats, both of men and women — when once they had quitted the becoming costume of the Middle Ages — arose out of one and the same type; a large circle of stuff with a projecting central cap for the skull. Human invention, in the matter of hats, seems for several centuries to have rested in this solitary idea. When this circular adumbral and pluvial roofing had to be adapted to the female head, it was found advisable to fasten it down to the cranium — not, indeed, by any screw driven therein, nor by any intriguing with the locks of woman's hair, but by the simple expedient of ribands passing under the chin. The difficulty consisted in attaching the upper ends of these ribands; for if they were sewn on under the overlapping brim, the same brim would take liberties on a windy day, and would flap up and down like an Indian punka. If they were sewn outside, they acted like the sheets of a ship's sail, and pulled down the struggling circumference into two ugly projections, bellying out before and behind. However, women, for comfort's sake, having got an awkward article to deal with, preferred the latter alternative — tied down their hats with ribands, (men, be it remembered, at the same time, tied up their brims into the prim, high, cocked shape,) and called these ugly coverings "gipsy hats." We remember something like them, dear reader,

"When first we went a-gipsying, long long ago."

Before matters had arrived at this pitch of ugliness, the ladies of the court of George III. — the very antipodes of that of Louis XIV. — had essayed, under the auspices of good Queen Charlotte, to render the round hat, with the straight-projecting brim, less ugly; but their invention carried them no further than to surround it, at one time, with a deep ruff of ribands, or they crushed it into an untidy rumble-tumble shape; at another, they let copious streamers float from the crown down their backs; or again, they gave it a monstrous pitch up behind. There is this to be said in their excuse — they hardly knew what parasols and umbrellas were. They wielded enormous fans, nearly two feet long; they had capuchins to their cloaks; and they delighted in the rotundity of hoops. Peace be with the souls of our grandmothers! Good old creatures! they were not very tasty, to be sure; but they wore glorious stiff taffety fardingales, and they have left us many an ample commode full of real china. As times wore on, and as the free-and-easy revolutionary school came to inculcate their loose doctrines on women as well as men, the ladies began to find the hinder pokes of their hats uncommon nuisances; and so, in a fit of spleen, one day the Duchess of G — , or some other woman of fashion, cut off this hinder protuberance, and appeared, to the scandal of her neighbours, plus the front poke, minus the back one. This was a daring, free-thinking, revolutionary innovation. Somebody had probably done it at Paris before her; but the startling idea had gone forth — women began to see daylight through their hats — the dawn of emancipation appeared — clip, clip, went the scissors, and, for the time being, the dynasty of gipsy hats had ceased to reign. Hereupon — the consequence of all changes of dynasties — whether of bonnets or Bourbons, 'tis much the same — a fearful period of anarchy ensued: every milliner's shop in Paris and London was pregnant with new shapes — bonnets periodically overturned bonnets, numbers were devoted to the block every week, and each succeeding month saw fresh competitors for public favour coming to the giddy vortex of fashion. Husbands suffered dreadfully during those troublous times: many a man's temper and purse were then irremediably damaged; and there seemed to be no means of escaping from this reign of female terror, this bonnetian chaos, until the great peace of 1814 brought about a prompt solution. Here, to be classical in so grave a matter, we may observe, that, just as Virgil in his Georgics represents a civil tumult, even in its loudest hubbub, to be suddenly calmed by the appearance of some man of known virtue and authority, so in London — and therefore in England — the visit of an illustrious lady, and the cut of her bonnet, appeased the agitated breasts of our fair countrywomen, and reduced their fancy to a fixed idea. The Grand-duchess of Oldenburg came over with her brother, the Emperor of all the Russias, and wore on her head, not a coronet — but such a bonnet!

"Ye powers who dress the head, if such there are,

And make the change of woman's taste your care!"

— so Cowper might well have exclaimed, had he been then living. Tell us, ye gods, whence did her imperial highness derive the idea of her bonnet? Truly, we can conjecture no other source, than these very words designating her rank, for the bonnet was imperial — none but such a lady would have dared to originate it; and it was also high — high indeed! The crown rose eighteen inches in perpendicular altitude from the nape of the neck, while the front poke retained the modest dimensions of the original gipsy hat. We recollect the duchess in Hyde Park with this monstrous headgear, and the women all in ecstacy at the delightful novelty. The success of this bonnet was universal — it was a "tremendous hit," as they say in the play-bills; every woman that could afford it raised her crown, and Oldenburgized her head. Well, this fashion lasted tolerably long; it had the great value of rendering public opinion nearly uniform; but it got old, as all fashions must do, and died a natural death — not without an heir, a worthy heir. The new idea, you will perceive, was that of inordinate length, in one way or the other. The duchess had got it all up aloft — up in her top-royals — the new bonnet (we really do not know who invented it, but some wicked little hussy at Paris, no doubt) had it all down below, in the main-sail; the crown dwindled to nothing, and out went the front poke to exactly the same length, eighteen inches. This was truly exquisite — every body was in raptures. The bonnet was tied tight under the chin, and to see a woman's face you had to look down a sort of semi-funnelled hollow, where the ambiguous shade of her countenance was illuminated only by the radiance of her eyes. Here, too, the success was immense; the mothers of us, the young bloods, the choice spirits of the present day, all wore bonnets of this kind, when our governors went wooing them in narrow-brimmed overtopping hats. The next change of any note worth mentioning, was one of comparatively recent times, such as some of us may remember their first loves in; it was derived from a partial return to the primitive round expanded hat, and was in its chief glory, when that last great piece of French dirty work, the Revolution of 1830, was perpetrated. Women had retrograded to the old circular idea; they had given up their pokes. It was too much — female folly had, it was supposed, worn itself out — a revolution was wanted, and it came. To wear the hat, however, in its primitive rotundity was impossible — it would have suited a lady in the West Indies, but not in Europe; to tie down the brim would not do, it would have been re-adopting the worn-out fashions; so, just as was done in the Parisian political revolution, a compromise of principles was resorted to — women cut off part of their brims, turned the circle into a sort of eccentric oval, and rejoiced in the redundant curve projecting now from the left, now on the right side of their heads. Ribands, stiffened out into gigantic bows, set forth the ample chapeau right gaily; the brim stretched itself out with all the insolence of a public favourite; and at length Tom Hood showed us how a lady might go to church on a rainy day, and shelter the whole family beneath her maternal hat. The present queen of the French wore an enormous chapeau of this kind at the audience which Louis Philippe gave to the peers and deputies that came to offer him the throne; every lady in England, of a certain age, has worn a hat of the same sort.

We are bound to allow that this hat had something of the useful in it: the ample size of the brim effectually warded off both sun and rain; and we much question whether the parasol trade did not rather languish under its influence. But then it had corresponding disadvantages; it was unbearable in a windy day, and rendered any thing like close contact with a friend impossible. To get a kiss from your pretty cousin, or your maiden aunt, if you met them in the street, was quite out of the question, unless you previously doffed your hat; and, as for two young ladies laying their heads together and whispering soft secrets, no such thing was practicable. The downfall, therefore, of such stiff and unwieldy hats might have been foretold from an early period of their existence; it came, and with it a counter-revolution — a restoration of the legitimist bonnet. But, mark the malignity of a certain elderly personage, whose name and residence we never mention in ears polite; a change, a final change, came, and it came from the source of all abominations — Paris! Yes! 'twas a pure and genuine invention of the fickle people — of la jeune France! We gave up the restored bonnet, and we adopted the little, reduced, cut-away, impudent bonnet of the present moment. Now, with regard to the actual origin of this same form of bonnet, which has met with universal approbation, but which has no really good qualities to recommend it, except those of portability and warmth to the ears of the wearer — we make, with some regret, the following assertion, upon the accuracy of which we stake our æsthetic reputation. We were witnesses of the fact; any man in Paris, who had his eyes about him, must have witnessed the same thing; we appeal to all the lions of the Bois, or the Boulevard des Italiens: these small bonnets, and the peculiar mode of wearing them at the back of the head were first introduced in Paris by a class of persons, to whom we cannot make any more definite allusion than to say that their names must not be mentioned. These people invented these bonnets, and wore them for nearly six months before they were imitated; and then, the fashion being taken up by the milliners, became general both in France and England. A corresponding change in the cut of the upper portions of ladies' gowns, and in the manner of putting on the shawl — that very cut and manner now universally adopted — came from the same source, and at the same time. These changes added greatly to female comfort, we admit; and they were founded, mainly, on principles of good taste; but they had also other causes, obvious to the æsthetician and the ethnologist, which we abstain from noticing. Once more, having been eye-witnesses to the change, and having at the time maliciously speculated within our own breasts as to how long it would take for such a mode to run the round of women's heads — our anticipations having been fully realized — we pledge ourselves to the accuracy of this statement.

Well, then, having thus run a-muck against bonnets, what reparation are we to make to the fair sex, for abusing their taste and condemning their practice? We will try to point out to them certain leading ideas, which may bring them back to sounder principles, and make the covering of their heads worthy of the beauty of their faces. And here, as in the case of hats, the first thing to be aimed at must be, utility — the second, ornament. Be it observed, too, that we are writing for the latitude of England; because in this respect, as in most others, the climate ought to decide upon the basis of national costume. Now an Englishwoman, of whatever grade she may be, requires, when she goes out of doors, protection principally from wet, next from cold, and lastly from heat. Her head-dress, to be really useful, ought to comprise qualities that will effect these three objects. The substance, therefore, of the covering cannot consist of cotton, linen, or silk, at all times of the year; these substances will do for the more temperate or the hotter seasons, but not in winter — that is to say, they will not be serviceable during five months out of the twelve. In this inclement season nothing but woollen cloth or fur ought to be the principal article of female head-dress; only these two substances will effectually keep off wet and cold. They may be lined with silk or any other soft substance, but the foundation, we repeat, ought to be fur or woollen cloth; both of them articles of English manufacture or preparation — one varying through all degrees of price; the other within the reach of most persons, even in the middling classes of society. In the summer, silk, linen, cotton, or any other light fabric, will effect the purpose proposed — protection from the rays of the sun, and from the casual wet that may occur — though from the last, less than from the first inconvenience. So much for the common substance of an Englishwoman's out-of-door head-dress — for the material, that is to say: its use should always be modified by the rank and occupation of the wearer. The form must be ascertained from a reference to the principles laid down above, as to the combining a proper degree of concealment, with the due exhibiting of the beautiful features of the female face; the covering should afford ample concealment when wanted, but should also admit of the head being completely exposed when required. Now, the veil gives abundant concealment, but does not admit of total removal, and is rather inconvenient to the wearer; it is apt to get in the way, and is in danger of causing a slovenly, or even a dirty, appearance; it is more suited for in-door, than for out-of-door use — more for a warm than a cold climate. The hood is the best thing we know of, for combining the two requisites of complete concealment and complete exposure. It unites by its shape all the purposes of form, to the applicability of any kind of soft material; and it is suitable to the climate of this country at any period of the year. But, "how ugly!" the ladies will exclaim — "who could bear to tie her head up in a pudding-bag? — Does not the very form of the hood approach too nearly to that of the head, and thus violate a fundamental principle of æsthetics?" Our reply must be, that there are various kinds of hoods, and that, if they be considered ugly, it is more from their strangeness, through long disuse, than from any fault in their natural form. Besides, the very principle of concealment, so essential to a woman's modesty, militates rather against the principle of beauty; we admit it to be a difficulty — we would even say that the head of the female while out-of-doors, amid the busy throng, does not admit of the same degree of ornament as the head of the male. If we can make woman's covering graceful, it is enough; the beauty of it should be reserved for the drawing-room and the boudoir — it should not be exhibited in the street. And after all, beauty for beauty, we will back a hood against a bonnet any day in the week.

Bear with us, however, gentle ladies, while we explain to you how we would have you make and wear your hoods; and, to do so the better, examine with us some of those delightful portraits of the time of Rubens and Vandyke, when, among the nobler classes of females, dress had certainly attained a high, if not its highest point of picturesque and elegant effect. Look at some of those admirable Flemish pictures, where you will see many a pretty face enveloped in a fur-trimmed hood, and observe how much grace and modest dignity is given by that simple habiliment. It is something of this kind which we would recommend. For example — if a hood, so cut as not to admit of too close a conformation to the shape of the head, were attached to a tippet which might descend and protect the shoulders, or come even lower, at the fancy of the wearer, and were fastened round the neck, the hood itself might be elevated so as to cover the head, and might be drawn even over the face; or it might be instantly thrown back, and would lie on the upper part of the neck in picturesque and graceful folds. The lines of such a covering, not so flowing, indeed, as those of a veil, would yet be not inelegant; and they would afford sufficient contrast to the features of the face, while they would be far superior to the unmeaning rigidity of the bonnet. Hoods, such as those, are even now worn by some ladies for carriage purposes, or while going to evening parties; and they would look just as well in the bright light of the sun, as by the pale rays of the moon. Consider for a moment the comfort and the utility of such a dress; what a complete protection from cold, and, if necessary, from wet! Even in summer, the hood would keep off the sun's beams much more effectually than any bonnet; it would be light, warm, portable — useable at pleasure, always ornamental, always becoming. These hoods would be of service, whether for a walk or for a journey in a carriage; they would not need to be disentangled from the person like bonnets; they would merely have to be thrown back; they never could get spoiled by crushing; they never would need cumbrous boxes to be carried in; and, what is worthy of consideration, their cost might always be suited to the means of the wearer. They would admit of any kind of ornament that would not destroy their principle of utility; — for ornament ceases to be ornament when it negatives the purpose of the object to which it is applied — it becomes in such a case a mere excrescence: they might be edged and lined with any, the most sumptuous or the plainest materials: they might be attached round the neck by rich cords of gold and jewelled clasps; or they might be fastened with simple ribands. Thus, in spring time, a young and high-born damsel might wear her hood and tippet of light-coloured silk or brocade, edged with ermine or swan's-down, and attached with silver cords and clasps of pearl — while the noble matron might wear the same of crimson or purple velvet, edged with sable, and attached with golden cords and diamonds. The peasant's wife and daughter might use hoods of black, blue, or grey woollen cloth, lined with grey linen, edged with plain riband, and fastened with a simple button. How much better, how much more rational, how much more becoming, such head-dresses as these, than the gay but useless ribands, feathers, and chapeaux of the one class, or the misshapen, uncomfortable, untidy-looking bonnets of the other! According to the present system, it is almost impossible to infer the rank of a lady from her external costume — many a milliner's girl has passed for a duchess before now — whereas by the adoption of articles of dress, founded on principles like those of the hood, some decisive marks of distinction might be obtained. Thus the rich furs and the jewels, or the gold brocade of the princess, might indeed be imitated by the merchant's wife — who at the present day is nearly her equal in wealth — the representative of political power in, what is called, a constitutional government; but the shop-girl and the dancing-mistress might break their hearts with spite, ere they could set up a system of dress in keeping with hoods of the kind alluded to. We do not recommend, that distinction of dress according to difference of rank should be carried to an undue limit; for in the present age of the world, and especially in our country, where the basis of society is shifting, and where the pivots of the commonweal are loose, too little distinction of rank is allowed; rank is not respected as it ought to be; but, nevertheless, the promiscuous jumbling together and confounding of all men is carried too far; it is one of the elements of republicanism and anarchy that we should do well to discourage. To ladies, more than to men, would distinctions of dress be useful, and with them they would be more practicable of reintroduction; any thing that would tend to augment the outward respect of men for women, and of women for each other, would be so much gained toward a revival of some of the soundest maxims of former days.

Bonnets, then, to Orcus! Hoods to the seventh heaven!

    H. L. J.

GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES

The Viceroy and the Aristocracy, or Mexico in 1812

Part the First

The most obvious defect of the German school of romance is the universal tendency of its writers to the indefinite and periphrastic, and the consequent absence of the characteristic and the true in their descriptions both of human and of external nature. Much of this prevailing habit may perhaps be attributed to the example of Goethe, who, in his works of fiction, narrates the adventures of A and B, residing in the town of C, situate in some nameless and inscrutable section of Germany. And when, to all this mystery, is superadded the ponderous and ungraceful style of most German writers, and the Latin construction of their interminable sentences, for the solution of which the reader must wade to the final word, the lack of good original novels, and the universal preference, in Germany, of translations from French and English authors, will be readily accounted for. The main source of these defects in the German writers may be found in their retired and bookish habits. Shut up in their studies, with no companions but their books and their meerschaums, and viewing the eternal world through the loopholes of retreat, often anxious, too, to advance and illustrate some pet theory of their own, their writings smell horribly of the lamp, and are long-winded, tedious, and unnatural. Another cause of the deficiencies above-named, may perhaps be discovered in the severity of German censorship, and the apprehension that more clearness and identity in their descriptions of persons and places might be twisted into political and personal allusions.

The admitted superiority of French and English works of fiction, may be attributed to the widely different habits of the writers. Nearly all the French, and many of the English writers of the present day, are men of the world, eschewing solitude, and mixing largely in society. The good effects of this frequent collision with their fellow-men are visible in their works, many of which display a deep knowledge of human nature, a vivid power of description, and a command of dialogue, not only spirited and natural, but often rising with the occasion into dramatic point and brilliancy.

At length, however, a new and radiant star has arisen in the cloudy firmament of German fiction — a novel-writer whose works exhibit a striking example of entire exemption from the defects so evident in the great majority of his brethren. This is a nameless personage, known among German reviewers as Der Unbekannte, or the Unknown, and who has broken ground that no German writer had hitherto ventured upon. Some have supposed him to be a Pennsylvanian, a considerable part of which state was originally colonized by Germans, whose descendants still, to a large extent, preserve the language and habits of the mother country. Another report stated him to be a native German, who had emigrated to Louisiana, and established himself there as a planter. Nothing definite, in short, is known; but what is certain is, that he has been long resident in the United States and in Mexico, and has made excellent use of his opportunities for becoming acquainted with those countries and their inhabitants. His subjects are, with slight exceptions, Transatlantic, his materials original, his style singularly natural and forcible; proving that however rugged the German language may appear in the works of others, it will yield to the hand of a master, and readily adapt itself to every subject.

Our readers will probably not have forgotten a series of American, Texian, and Mexican tales and sketches, which have appeared during the last few months in the pages of this magazine. With some alterations and adaptations, intended to render them more acceptable to English tastes, they are selections from the works of the writer above described. These works being published, as already mentioned, anonymously, and at prices beyond the means of most German readers, are but partially known and read even in Germany; and in this country they are entirely unknown, such portions excepted as have appeared without a name in our recent numbers. Having there presented our readers with specimens only, and for the most part of his latest works, we will now proceed to give them some account of one of his earliest and most important productions — a Mexican historical romance of striking interest, dated two years subsequently to the first revolutionary outbreak in Mexico, and exhibiting a degree of descriptive and dramatic power unparalleled in the whole range of German fiction.

When, in the year 1776, the British colonies, now known as the United States of America, made their declaration of independence, the struggle that ensued was unmarked by any circumstances of particular atrocity or blood-thirstiness, except perhaps, occasionally, on the part of the Indian allies of either party. The fight was between men of the same race, who had been accustomed to look upon each other as countrymen and brothers, and whose sympathies and feelings were in many respects in unison; it was fought manfully and fairly, as beseemed civilized men in the eighteenth century of the Christian era. Whatever wrongs, real or imaginary, the British Americans had to complain of, they had none that sufficed, even in their own eyes, to justify reprisals or cruelties beyond those which the most humanely conducted and least envenomed wars inevitably entail. But it was under strikingly different circumstances that the second of the two great republics which, with the exception of British possessions, now comprise the whole civilized portion of the North American continent, started into existence. In the former instance was seen the young and vigorous country which, having attained its majority, and feeling itself able to dispense with parental guardianship, asserted its independence, and vindicated it, with a strong hand, it is true, but yet with a warm heart and a cool judgment. In the latter case it was the spring of the caged tiger, that for years had pined in narrow prison beneath the scourge of its keeper, whom it at last turned upon and rent in its fury.

Subdued by the fierce assault of a handful of desperate adventurers, the history of Mexico, from the earliest period of its conquest, is one continuous record of oppression and cruelty on the one hand, of long and bitter suffering on the other. Deprived of its religious and customs, its priesthood and legitimate sovereigns mercilessly tortured and slain, its temples and institutions annihilated, its very history and traditions blotted out, Mexico, in the hands of the Spaniards, was rapidly transformed from a flourishing and independent empire into a huge province; while its inhabitants became a disposable horde, on whom the conquerors seemed to think they were conferring a benefit, when they made gift of them by hundreds and thousands, like sheep or oxen, to a lawless and reckless soldiery. Their houses and lands, sometimes even their wives and children, were snatched from them, and they were driven in herds to labour in the mines, or condemned to carry burdens over pathless and precipitous mountains; like the Gibeonites of old, they were made hewers of wood and drawers of water to all the congregation. Expelled from the towns, and confined to hamlets and villages, whence they were only summoned to toil in the service of their oppressors, they became in time entirely brutalized, losing the finer and more noble qualities that distinguish man from the beast of the forest, and retaining only a bitter sense of their degradation, a vivid impression of the sufferings they daily endured, and a gloomy instinctive longing after a bloody revenge.

With these Indians, who, at the commencement of the present century, composed two-fifths of the population of Mexico, may be classed a race of beings equally numerous, equally unfortunate and destitute, and still wilder and more despised — namely, the various castes sprung from the intercourse of the conquerors of the country, of their successors and slaves, with the aborigines. These half-bloods, who united the apparent stupidity and real apathy of the Indian with the lawlessness and impatience of restraint of their white fathers, found themselves driven out into a world that branded them for the accident of their birth; deprived of all property, and reduced to the most ignoble employments; continual objects of fear and detestation to the better classes, because they had nothing to risk, and every thing to gain, by a political convulsion. Such were the principal elements of a population which, after centuries of patient endurance, was at last roused to enter the lists and struggle for its independence, with all the fury of the captive who breaks the long-worn fetters from his chafed and bleeding limbs, and seeks his deliverance in the utter extermination of his jailers.

For three hundred years had the Mexicans groaned under the lash of their taskmasters, ruled by monarchs whom they never beheld, and enduring innumerable evils, without nourishing a single rebellious or revolutionary thought. If the breeze of liberty that blew over from the north, occasionally awakened in their minds the idea of an improved state of things, the hope, or rather wish, speedily died away, crushed and annihilated under the well-combined system of oppression employed by the Spaniards. The nobles had ranged themselves entirely on the side of the government, the middle classes had followed their example, and the people were compelled to obey. All was quiet in Mexico, long after insurrections had broken out in Spanish colonies further south; and this state of tranquillity was not even disturbed, when news were brought of the invasion of Spain by its hereditary foe, of the occupation of Madrid by French armies, and of the scenes of butchery that took place in that capital on the second day of May 1808. The Mexicans, far from availing themselves of this favourable opportunity to proclaim their own independence, hastened to give proofs of their sympathy with the aggrieved honour of the mother country; and on all sides resounded curses upon the head of the powerful usurper who had ousted their legitimate but unknown monarch from his throne, and now detained him in captivity. Intelligence of the Junta's declaration of war against Napoleon was received with unbounded applause, and all were striving to demonstrate their enthusiasm in the most efficient manner, when a royal decree arrived, issued by the very prince whose misfortunes they were deploring, and by which Mexico was ordered to recognise as its sovereign the brother of that usurper who had dispossessed its rightful king.

A stronger proof of Ferdinand's unworthiness to rule, could hardly have been given to the Mexicans than the decree in question. Loyalty had long been an article of faith with the whole nation; but even as the blindest superstition is sometimes metamorphosed on a sudden into total infidelity, passing from one extreme to the other, so was all feeling of loyalty utterly extinguished in the breast of the Mexican people by this instance of regal abjectness. It would have been long before they revolted against their hereditary Spanish ruler; but to find themselves given away by him in so ignominious a manner, was a degradation which they felt the more deeply from its being almost the only one that had been hitherto spared them. Discontent was universal; and by a unanimous and popular movement, the decree was publicly burned.

With just indignation did the Mexicans now discover that those persons who had hitherto most prided themselves on their loyalty and fidelity to the king and the reigning dynasty, were precisely the first to transfer their allegiance to the new sovereign. The whole of the government officers, Spaniards nearly to a man, hastened to take measures for the surrender of the nation to its new ruler, without even enquiring whether it approved of the change. One man only was in favour of a more honourable expedient, and that man was Iturrigaray, the viceroy. Well acquainted with the cowardice and cunning of his captive sovereign, the former of which qualities had dictated the decree, he had nevertheless formed a plan to preserve Mexico for him, in accordance with the wish of its population. A junta, composed of Spaniards and of the most distinguished Mexicans, was to represent the nation till the arrival of further news or orders from Europe. This plan was generally approved of by the Mexicans, who looked forward with unbounded delight to the moment when they should have a voice in the public affairs of their country. The joy was universal; but in the very midst of this joy, and of the preliminaries to the carrying out of this project, the author of it, the viceroy himself, was seized in his palace by his own countrymen, conducted with his family to Vera Cruz, and slipped off to Spain as a state prisoner.

By this lawless proceeding, it was made evident to the weakest comprehension, that so long as the Spaniard ruled, the Mexican must remain in a state of unconditional slavery; that he could never hope to obtain a share in the management of his country; and that the act of violence of which Iturrigaray had been the victim, had been solely caused by the disposition he had shown to pave the way for the gradual emancipation of the Creoles. From this moment may be dated the decision of the Mexicans to get rid of the Spaniards at any price; and a conspiracy was immediately organized, which was joined by at least a hundred of the principal Creoles, and by a far larger number of the middle classes, and of the military — the object being to shake off the ignominious yoke that pressed so heavily upon them. The treason of one of the conspirators, who on his death-bed, in confession, betrayed his confederates, accelerated the outbreak of the plot.

It was at nine o'clock on the evening of the 15th September 1810, that Don Ignacio Allende y Unzaga, captain in the royal regiment de la Reyna, came in all haste from Gueretaro to Dolores, and burst into the dwelling of Padre Hidalgo, the parish priest of the latter place, with news that the conspiracy had been discovered, and an order issued to take prisoners, dead or alive, all those concerned in it. With the prospect of certain death before their eyes, the two conspirators held a short consultation, and then hastened to announce to their friends their firm decision to stake their lives upon the freedom of their country. Two officers, the lieutenants Abasalo and Aldama, and several musicians, friends and companions of the cura, joined them, and by these men, thirteen in number, was the great Mexican revolution begun.

Whilst Hidalgo, a crucifix in his left hand, a pistol in his right, hurried to the prison and set at liberty the criminals confined there, Allende proceeded to the houses of the Spanish inhabitants, and compelled them to deliver up their plate and ready money. Then, with the cry of "Viva la Independencia, y muera el mal gobierno!" the insurgents paraded the streets of Dolores. The whole of the Indian population ranged themselves under the banner of their beloved curate, who, in a few hours, found himself at the head of some thousand men. They took the road to Miguel el Grande, and, before reaching that place, were joined by eight hundred recruits from Allende's regiment. Shouting their war-cry of "Death to the Gachupins!"[5 - Gachupin is an untranslatable word of Mexican origin. The Spaniards asserted it to mean a hero on horseback; the Indians and coloured races, who applied it as a term of contempt and reproach to the Spaniards and their dependent Creoles, understood by it a thief.] the rebels reached San Felipe; in three days their numbers amounted to twenty thousand; at Zelaya, a whole regiment of Mexican infantry, and a portion of the cavalry regiment of the Principe, came over to them. On they went, "Mueran los Gachupinos!" still their cry, to Guanaxato, the richest city in Mexico, where they were joined by some more troops. Indians kept flowing in from all sides, and the mob, for it was little more, soon reached fifty thousand men. The fortified alhondega, or granary, at Guanaxato, was taken by storm; the Spaniards and Creoles who had shut themselves up there with their treasures, were massacred; upwards of five millions of hard dollars fell into the hands of the insurgents. This success brought more Indians from all parts of the country. There were soon eighty thousand men collected together, but amongst them were hardly four thousand muskets. Pressing forward, by way of Valladolid, towards Mexico, they totally defeated Colonel Truxillo at Las Cruces, and, on the 31st October, looked down from the rising ground of Santa Fé upon the capital city, within the walls of which were thirty thousand Léperos,[6 - The word Léperos, which, literally translated, means lepers, is the term applied to the homeless and houseless wretches who are to be seen wandering by thousands about the city and suburbs of Mexico. They consist of beggars, mechanics, writers, and even artists. The most industrious amongst them work one, or at most two, days in the week, and the dress of these consists of thin trousers, a sort of cloak, and a straw hat. Their dwelling is in any hole or corner, under the arcades of the houses, or in the mud cottages of the suburbs. Some of the work they produce is wonderful for its beauty and ingenuity. They manufacture the finest gold chains, surpassing any thing of the kind that is to be found in Europe. Their statuettes and images of saints are often masterpieces. During the revolution their character as a class became materially worse. There are more than ten thousand of them who do literally nothing, possess nothing, and lie about the streets stark naked, with the exception of a tattered woollen blanket.] who awaited but the signal to break into open insurrection. Only two thousand troops of the line garrisoned Mexico; Calleja, the commander-in-chief, was a hundred leagues off; another general, the Count of Cadena, sixty; in the mountains the people were rising in favour of the revolution; another patriot chief was marching from Tlalnepatla to support Hidalgo, while the viceroy was preparing to retire to Vera Cruz. The fate of Mexico was, according to all appearance, about to be decided; one bold assault, and the Indians would again be the rulers of the country. But on the very day after their arrival within sight of Mexico, Hidalgo, with his hundred and ten thousand men, commenced a retreat. The capital was saved; and from that day may be dated the sufferings and reverses of the patriots.

Or the 7th November, at Aculco, Hidalgo met the united Spanish and Creole army, and was defeated in the combat that ensued. Soon afterwards, Allende experienced a like misfortune at Marfil; and a third action, near Calderon, decided the fate of the campaign. Hidalgo himself was betrayed at Acalito, with fifty of his companions, and put to death.

The first act of the revolutionary drama was over, within six months after the bloody curtain had been raised; but the torch of insurrection, far from being extinguished by the fall of its bearer, had divided and multiplied itself, as if to spread the conflagration with more certainty. Thousands of those who had escaped from the battle-fields of Aculco, Marfil, and Calderon, now spread themselves through the different provinces, and commenced a war of extermination that was destined, slowly but surely, to sweep away their unappeasable tyrants. Most of these bands were commanded by priests, lawyers, or adventurers, who acted without plan or concert, and possessed little or no qualification for their post as leaders, save their hatred of the Gachupins. But few of the better class of Creoles were to be found amongst the insurgents; and the strife was to all appearance between the Indians and half-bloods, on the one hand, and the property and intelligence of the country, represented by the Spaniards and Creoles, on the other.

The Creoles, although considerably less oppressed than the coloured races, had felt themselves more so; because, being more enlightened and civilized, they had a livelier feeling and perception of the yoke than the Indians and half-castes. Children and descendants of the Spaniards, who looked with sovereign contempt upon every thing Creole, even to their own offspring, the white Mexicans imbibed hatred of Spain almost with their mothers' milk. Far from enjoying what the letter of the law gave them, the same rights as their European fathers, they found themselves driven back among the people; while all offices and posts were filled by Spaniards, who, for the most part, came to Mexico in rags, and left it possessed of immense wealth. Even the possession of magnificent estates, with their incalculable subterranean treasures, was of precarious benefit to the Creoles; for the Spaniards paid small respect to the laws of property, and, in the name of their royal master, assumed unlimited power over the land.

The bitterness of feeling consequent on this state of things, at length roused into activity the latent desire of freedom from the Spanish rule, a freedom which was to have been obtained by the conspiracy already referred to. On a given day, there was to have been a general rising throughout Mexico; all the Spanish officers and employés were to have been arrested, and their places filled by Creoles; the seaports were to have been seized and garrisoned, so as to prevent succours coming to the Spaniards from the neighbouring island of Cuba. The discovery and premature outbreak of the plot, as already mentioned, were the causes of its failure. Hidalgo, who was too deeply compromised to recede, had put himself at the head of the revolution, and enraged against the Creoles, who had, for the most part, managed to draw their heads out of the noose, commenced with his Indians a war of extermination that spared neither Spaniards nor Creoles. This terrible blunder on the part of the soldier-priest, of itself decided the fate of the outbreak. The Creoles were compelled to unite with the very Spaniards whose downfall they had been plotting; and it was mainly through their co-operation that the three battles with the rebels had been won. The Spaniards, however, instead of being grateful for the assistance they had received from the Creoles, persisted in looking upon the latter as a pack of unlucky rebels, whose treason had not even been rendered respectable by success.

Enraged at the revolt that had threatened to deprive their king of his supremacy, and themselves of the plunder of the richest country in the world, the Spaniards applied themselves to obviate the possibility of any future rebellion, by pretty much the same measures that a bee-hunter takes to secure himself against the stings of the bees before seizing their honey, namely, by fire and the axe. Twenty-four cities, both large and small, and innumerable villages, were razed to the ground during the first eighteen months of the revolution, and their inhabitants utterly exterminated, as a punishment for having favoured the insurgents. Even then, these bigoted and barbarous servants of legitimacy were not satisfied with this wholesale slaughter. Through the medium of the church, and in the name of the divine Trinity and of the blessed Virgin, they proclaimed a solemn amnesty, and those among the credulous and unfortunate rebels who availed themselves of it were mercilessly massacred. This infamous and blasphemous piece of bad faith rendered any pacification of the country impossible, and went far towards uniting the whole population against its contemptible and blood-thirsty tyrants.

Amongst the adventurers who had joined Hidalgo on his triumphant march from Guanaxato to Mexico, was his old friend and schoolfellow, Morellos, rector of Nucupetaro. Hidalgo received him as a brother, and comnissioned him to raise the standard of revolt in the south-western provinces of Mexico. Morellos, who was then sixty years of age, repaired to his appointed post with only five followers. In Petalan he was joined by twenty negroes, to whom he promised their freedom; and soon afterwards several Creoles ranged themselves under his banner. Unlike the unfortunate Hidalgo, he began the war on a small scale, and after the fashion of those guerillas who in Spain had done so much mischief to the French armies. Gradually enlarging the sphere of his operations, he had, during a sixteen months' warfare, gained several not unimportant advantages over the Spanish generals. Report represented him as a man of grave and earnest character — quite the converse of the hasty and unreflecting Hidalgo — of sound judgment, irreproachable morals, and far more liberal and extended views than could have been expected from the confined education of a Mexican priest. The influence he possessed over the Indians was said to be unbounded.

At the time at which the action of the book now before us commences, namely, upon a carnival day of the year 1812, Morellos had marched into the vicinity of Mexico at the head of his little army. The principal leaders of the patriots, Vittoria, Guerero, Bravo, Ossourno, and others, had placed themselves under his orders; and the moral weight of his name seemed to be at last producing what had been wanting since the death of Hidalgo — namely, that unanimity in the operations of the patriots, and that degree of discipline amongst their troops, which were calculated to gain them the confidence of the nation.

The first two chapters of the "Viceroy" are of so striking a nature, and give such strange and startling glimpses of the state of Mexican society and feeling at that period, that, with some slight abridgement, we shall here translate them both.

Chapter the First

"'Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout
All countries of the Catholic persuasion,
Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about,
The people take their fill of recreation,
And buy repentance, ere they grow devout,
However high their rank, or low their station,
With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masking,
And other things which may be had for asking."

    Byron.