about his royal throat. By wearing a similar covering Beau Brummel earned the gratitude and confidence of his sovereign, for the Beau knew how to give a certain style to any garment, however hideous, and the gentlemen of England, succumbing to his charms, adopted the fashion en masse.
In the army upright collars were introduced, the height of which may be gauged by the fact that they were decorated with four rows of gold lace an inch and a quarter deep. They were as stiff as many thicknesses of buckram could make them; but even more than this, for the collars worn by soldiers included a stock of hard sole-leather, five inches in height. Imagine the discomfort of wearing one's neck constantly screwed up in such a vice! No wonder that fainting, heat-stroke, and apoplexy should have been common in the army under these conditions. George IV. died in 1830; but his military collar and stock survived him for a quarter of a century.
During the early years of Queen Victoria elderly gentlemen wore high starched cambric neck-cloths. But later on a more rational neck-dress came into use among the younger members of society in the Byronic collar, which, as the name indicates, was one of the forms in which imitation of the fashionable poet was exhibited.
The "masher" collar, which may be looked upon as, to a certain extent, a revival of the fashion popularized by Beau Brummel, has been brought into wear, like many other revivals of the styles of past generations, by means of a power of which
