STEEPLE HEAD-DRESS OF 15TH CENTURY.
Roman matrons generally preferred blonde hair to their own ebon tresses, and resorted to wigs and dye when Nature, as they considered, had treated them unkindly. Ovid rebukes a lady of his acquaintance in the plainest terms for having destroyed her hair.
"Did I not tell you to leave off dyeing your hair? Now you have no hair left to dye: and yet nothing was handsomer than your locks: they came down to your knees, and were so fine that you were afraid to comb them. Your own hand has been the cause of the loss you deplore: you poured the poison on your own head. Now Germany will send you slaves' hair—a vanquished nation will supply your ornament. How many times, when you hear people praising the beauty of your hair, you will blush and say to yourself: 'It is bought ornament to which I owe my beauty, and I know not what Sicambrian virgin they are admiring in me. And yet there was a time when I deserved all these compliments.'"
EARLY TUDOR HEAD-DRESS.
It would puzzle any fin de siècle husband or brother to express his displeasure in more appropriate words than those chosen by the poet.
HORNED HEAD-DRESS OF EDWARD IV.'s REIGN.
