120 About Breeches and Boots. 



buttons, white neckcloth, and broad-brimmed white beaver 

 hat, and drove down to the House daily in a yellow, old- 

 fashioned, high kind of gig with a head, much resembling 

 the vehicle in which Dr. Syntax is represented by Rowland- 

 son as driving Mrs. Syntax home to his vicarage at the end 

 of his third tour. I wonder how many men have '' passed 

 out" in honours in classics, mathematics, law, physic, 

 divinity, army, navy, &c., (fee, who are well posted up in 

 dates of imaginary deeds, which by courtesy are called facts, 

 out of compliment to so-called history, who have never read, 

 and possibly never heard of, Dr. Syntax's '' Tour," the best 

 record by far of some of the rustic life and manners in the 

 days of our great-grandfathers. 



Top-boots, similar in principle to those of our grand- 

 fathers, were worn in the time of George II., in proof 

 whereof vide Hogarth's '' Rake's Progress," the gambling- 

 house scene, in which a highwayman is represented as sitting 

 by the fire in a pair of boots with tops made from a turn- 

 over at the top ; but our old-fashioned top-boot belonged to 

 George III.'s reign. In many of the pictures of George III. 

 as a young man, he is represented in private life in breeches 

 and tops, the Windsor uniform coat, and a cockade in his 

 hat, such as a footman wears now. No matter about the 

 exact date, the dress is nearly a century old, at any rate. 

 The villainous crew who belonged to Robespierre, Marat, 

 and the Girondists, copied the top-boots from us, and also 

 imported the bull-dog. In fact, from time to time other 

 European nations and ourselves have exchanged articles of 

 dress. We borrowed the Hessians from our foreign neigh- 

 bours ; they certainly were in vogue at the time of the Irish 

 rebellion, as Emmetfc, the Irish rebel, was painted in them, 

 and were common during the first quarter of this century 

 in the Theodore Hook days. The French copied our 

 " Wellingtons," and I suppose that we are indebted for the 



