128 Notes and Sketches. 



feeding were understood to be hateful peculiarities of 

 the English, and unworthy of the people who had been 

 so much more favoured by God in a knowledge of 

 matters of higher concern. There was, nevertheless," it 

 is added, " a great amount of hospitality." How the 

 virtue of hospitality could possibly be exercised under 

 the depressing influence of such morose and gloomy 

 hosts is not quiet apparent. And, despite any reliable 

 evidence yet produced to the contrary, we are convinced 

 that Puritanic theology, even where it was most 

 generally influential, was never in our history effective 

 in suppressing the features of humanity to the extent 

 indicated, except it might be in the case of a rather 

 limited number of fanatics ; whose example would not 

 seem to have been by any means slavishly imitated by 

 the great body of the people. 



Up to about the time mentioned the almost universal 

 dress of middle-class gentlemen was " hodden grey ;" 

 though we are told that as early as 1731 " hoops were 

 constantly worn " by the ladies, " four and a-half yards 

 wide," and which " required much silk to cover them." 

 An ungallant local writer, twenty years later, speaks of 

 the ladies at a public ball wearing " hoops of immense 

 deformity." The heads " were all dressed in laces from 

 Flanders ;" but though " the price of these was high, 

 two suits would serve for life ; they were not renewed 

 but at marriage or some great event." An English 

 gentleman who visited Scotland at the beginning of 

 the century, states that about 1702 he found the Low- 

 landers " dressed much like his own countrymen, ex- 

 cepting that the men generally wore bonnets instead of 

 hats, and plaids instead of cloaks; the women, too, 

 wearing plaids when abroad or at church." Women of 

 the humbler class generally went barefoot, " especially 

 in summer." The children of people of the better sort, 

 "lay and clergy," were likewise generally without shoes 

 and stockings. This description would apply very 

 fairly to the state of matters a hundred years later. 



