240 A Walk from 



he looked. It may be a proper and utilitarian change, 

 but one can hardly notice without regret what trans- 

 formations the railway regime has wrought in customs 

 and habits which once individualised a country and 

 people. A kind of French centralisation in the world 

 of fashion has been established, which has overridden 

 and obliterated all the dress-boundaries of civilised 

 nations. All the upper and middle classes of Chris- 

 tendom centre themselves to one focus of taste and 

 merge into one plastic commonwealth, to be shaped 

 and moulded virtually by a common tailor. Their coats, 

 vests, pantaloons, boots and shoes are made substan- 

 tially after the same pattern. For a while, hats stood 

 out with some show of pluck and patriotism, and 

 made a stand for national individuality, but it was 

 in vain. They, too, succumbed to the inexorable law 

 of Uniformity. That law was liberal in one respect. 

 It did not insist that the stove-pipe form should rule 

 inflexibly. It admitted several variations, including 

 wide-awakes, pliable felts, and that little, squat, lack- 

 a-daisical, round-crowned, narrow-brimmed thing worn 

 by the Prince of Wales in the photographs taken 

 of him and the Princess at Sandringham. But this 

 has come to be the rule : that hats shall no longer 

 represent distinct nationalities ; that they shall be 

 interchangeable in all civilised communities ; in a 



