visitors to the Health or Inventions Exhibitions must have envied the costumes worn by the employés in Old London, whose clothes were so becoming, so comfortable, so infinitely more desirable in every way than the angularly-cut and sad-coloured garments of the present day, with their accompanying tortures of "masher collars," stiff cuffs, and silk hats.
Why is it then, it may well be asked, that bad old fashions are generally revived in preference to good ones? The answer is to be found in the fact that revivals are the work of trade influence, and that as it is to the interest of those concerned in trade that fashions should be as extravagant as possible, there is no probability that they would attempt to revive styles which are simple and owe their healthfulness to following the lines of nature.
Obstacles are placed in the way of every alteration, it is true; but again to quote the words of one of the greatest practical physiologists that has ever lived, "surely no question of mere (pecuniary) gain to any or to every class ought to be allowed to stand for ever in the way, when the lives and happiness of multitudes of our fellow-creatures and the tranquillity and real prosperity of the country are at stake. Unless we begin somewhere, how can any improvement ever be accomplished ?"[1]
It must be obvious, from what I have already said, that the interests of the public and of the tradesmen engaged in supplying them with clothes by no means coincide, and therefore it behoves
- ↑ Combe's "Principles of Physiology," ed. 1835, p. 22.
