Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/307

 illustrate rather appropriately the very same tendency of civilised institutions to develop by gradual, rather than violent, changes which has just been referred to. For, while a good deal is heard about the "vagaries" of fashion, technical writers on the subject always seem to be able to predict some time in advance the movements of modish costume; and they sometimes even condescend to explain the processes of thought and observation by which their apparently inspired predictions are arrived at. Moreover, admitting, and allowing for, the extremest variations in detail, costume in civilised countries can hardly be said to have materially and intrinsically altered—cannot, that is to say, be said to have altered its fundamental characteristics—during a century, in the ease of men, nor during a great many centuries in the case of women. Since the age of knee-breeches succeeded the age of doublet and hose, men have always protected their legs with "bifurcated integuments"—some sort of double tube secured to a copious bag enclosing the middle of the body—and the upper part of the trunk with a coat and waistcoat; while women have always worn bodices and petticoats of one shape or another. Neither has the loudest outcry against the irrationality of costume as a whole, nor even the ridicule showered upon single elements of it, ever had the least effect in producing revolutionary modification. Punch