“Thought the life of ev’ry lady
Should be one continued play-day—
Balls, and masquerades, and shows,
Visits, plays, and powdered beaus.”
The wits and poets of that brilliant era, have hit off the manners of the times, and all the paraphernalia of patches, fans, hoops, and head-dresses, by a few touches of the pen, with such airy grace and lightness in the true spirit of comic revelry, and with keenest irony, that more modern efforts in the same style appear, by comparison, coarse and clumsy. In our own day one would think the artists all copied from the same model,
“Small waist, wide flounces, and a face divine,
Wretchedly foolish, and extremely fine.”
The ladies’ head-dresses, which, in the time of William III., had shot up to a height which would have astonished even De Grammont’s Princess of Babylon, had now fallen many degrees. Addison remarks, “some ten years ago, the female part of our species were much taller than the men. The women were of such an enormous stature, “that we appeared as grasshoppers before them.” At present the whole sex is in a manner dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seems almost another species. I remember several ladies who were very near seven feet high that at present want some inches of five. How they came to be thus curtailed I could never learn:”
Instead of home-spun coifs were seen
Good pinners edged with Colberteen.